An assistant cook once told me that he was fired for eating a chicken Kiev. Hungry after a long shift, he was tucking in out back when the eagle-eyed restaurant manager tapped him on the shoulder and gave him his cards for stealing and cooking the leftover.

I’d also heard that staff meals in one famous TV chef’s restaurant were an unremitting diet of fried eggs, so I asked a friend who works at a middle-range restaurant in South London what she is given. “Staff meals? Don’t make me laugh,” she scoffed. “If you’re ravenous at the end of a five-hour evening serving up lovely food to other people, there’s always the scrapings from the pans or the portions nobody ordered. I’ve been known to…

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